Still, although his career was not such as any well-balanced man could possibly have engaged in, and although his excessive vanity deluded him, as it has deluded many others whose sanity has not been impugned, it was clear enough that he understood what he was about, and was not dangerous to the community as a free man. His acquittal, therefore, was a necessary result of the sound common-sense of the jury.

In the case of Ellen Godwin, of Louisville, who followed her alleged seducer twenty years, dogging his footsteps in the street, until she was tried on the charge of insanity, it was shown that she had acted as no sane woman ever did before in pursuit of her revenge or monomania; but as she displayed a superior understanding on all other subjects, and could draw up a legal document in as terse and perspicuous a manner as any member of the bar, the jury charitably attributed her insane conduct to the great provocation she claimed to have received, (which was positively denied) and pronounced her of sane mind. Her advocates upon the trial stated that she was convinced that it would be better for her to discontinue her persecution of the gentleman, and that she intended to cease. Since her acquittal she has observed her promise, and although eminent experts pronounced her clearly insane, she seems in a fair way to refute their opinions. The verdict will be sustained by public opinion as it was received with enthusiasm; and it is clear that in all cases of insanity, the real question is not whether the individual acts with entire rationality, which none of us ever do for any great length of time, but whether the welfare of society or his own protection requires his restraint.

This is an important practical conclusion. The nice metaphysical discussions of the exact nature or definition of insanity, which have been in fashion, are entirely unnecessary and delusive, for it is as impossible to define insanity with any accuracy, as to portray the form of a rain-cloud by a verbal definition.

Our decision as to a charge of "non compos mentis" is but a' conjecture as to the probable future conduct of the individual, by inference from the past, and is often as difficult and obscure a matter, as the question in Wall street, whether to buy or sell a favorite stock.

What, then, is the value of the opinion of the medical expert? It may be a great deal if he is accustomed to watch the dawning

and the progress of insanity, and knows exactly what kind of mental and bodily infirmities are premonitors of serious unsoundness. It may be still more if he knows the difference of the temperaments, and the cerebral developments which are respect-ively liable to insanity, or fortified against it. I hold that an expert who thoroughly understands the brain, can give a very fair prognosis as to the liability of any individual to insanity or monomania, and I would mention the fact that in the month of July, 1872, when Mr. Greeley was in the full tide of an apparently successful progress toward the presidential chair, a physician of New York pronounced to me a positive opinion, when we were discussing the subject, that Mr. Greeley would die with a softened brain and loss of his mental powers; an opinion which I accepted as highly probable, and which was verified much sooner than we expected. The most obvious indication in Mr. Greeley's case, aside from his peculiar head and temperament, was his extreme excitability, which was too much for his tranquillity and self-control. Let all who find in themselves this morbid intensity of feeling, excitability of passion, and tendency to depression, take warning in time that they are indications of mental unsoundness, which they should struggle to overcome, as they would struggle with a deadly enemy; and not embrace or cherish the customary delusion that the passion was justified by the occasion, or the melancholy was but the natural consequence of living in a calamitous and wicked world. All such excuses are flimsy delusions: the world is not able to inflict melancholy upon us, or to put us into an unreasonable passion, so long as we have a sound mind in a sound brain. The sound brain is not liable to great extremes. In reviewing recently the writings of the distinguished French philosopher, Comte, I expressed the opinion that his brain was not altogether sound, and that probably if he had lived ten years longer, the fact would have become apparent to all. In looking afterward at his life, I found that he had experienced a severe attack of insanity in 1826, soon after his marriage.

But this is too large a subject for a periodical, and in the course of the next two years, I expect to be sufficiently advanced in the exposition of Anthropology to undertake an exposition of the philosophy, causes and cure of insanity.

Louisville, Ky., May 21st, 1874.

THE GRADUATE'S FAREWELL.

BY MISS LUCY W. HARRISON, M. D.

Valedictory Address, delivered at the Tenth Commencement of the Eclectic Medical College of the City of New York, held at Cooper Institute, February 3d, 1874.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Graduates:-Selected by the courtesy and partiality of my associates to speak the words of valediction, on an occasion when silence would be more eloquent, I will endeavor, with a suitable brevity to make a due acknowledgment. I am fully conscious of difficulty, in attempt to say but little, and to say that little well.

However great is our exultation and pleasure at this propitious, and we trust auspicious completion of the prescribed course of study, and the academical honors just conferred upon us, these emotions are qualified by the reflection, that the diplomas in our hands are the tokens of impending separation. Surrounded as we have been for so many months, by others engaged in the same pursuits, it has seemed as if each was a participant in the hopes and cares, as well as in the labors, ambitions and successes which have occupied the minds of his fellows. The very atmosphere where we have been associated was always friendly, and we have become habituated to regarding ourselves as a single household. Pleasant have been the hours which we have spent together, and we are grateful for them; let us believe them to be the precursors of future years of hopefulness, usefulness and genuine pleasure. This occasion we regard as a way-mark of our progress; and we trust that the degree just awarded us, will inspire us to new efforts, and fresh zeal in the course which we have chosen.

The ethics and restrictions which the Dark Ages fabricated to confine thought, and shackle enterprise, have been cast aside for the Golden Rule, illuminated and enlivened by golden example. Science has been invoked to point out the way of obedience to the laws of health, and the remedial art has been shown to us, to consist in an intelligent following of the clews which nature has given to find the way of exit from mortal peril. It is a humane skill that we have been taught, to heal

the sick with pure air from the sky, with light from the ether, with sleep and repose, with medicaments to arrest the ravages of fever and inflammation, drawn by subtle chemistry from the plants which the sun warmed and actinized, and the dews of heaven watered and filled with benign potency. We have learned what our fathers did not understand; that the lancet cures no ailment, and that the apartment of the sick is not a chamber for torturing. These are boons to the world from Eclectic Medicine, and it need not be added that they are blessings which have no disguise.

It has been to the honors of this branch of the healing art, that it has not been ungenerous in its ministrations. "Like the Holy Being above us who ordained families and gave women a place in them," this school, moving in advance of its rivals, has also welcomed women into its professional household.

This college acknowledges us as brothers and sisters alike, and therefore we are here. We came to illustrate no social problems, to decide no question of personal or intellectual equality, but as the children of a family, to do our part in the work which devolves upon each of us in the domestic arrangements. Every human being has a place to fill and a work to perform, which none other can do for us; and we have come as of right, and not of permission, to learn how to do it well.

The author of the late work, "Sex in Education," says: "Each must justify his existence by becoming a complete development of manhood and womanhood; and each should refuse whatever limits or dwarfs that development. Limitation and abortion of development lead both to weakness and failure."

We are grateful to Eclectics, and especially to the officers of this college, that while other institutions exclude us because of our sex, while insult and ribaldry await us at the hospital clinics which we pay to witness, here in our alma mater we have been always received with kindly welcome, more delightful to us than the vaunted courtesy. It was conferred, not as a privilege, but as an act of justice. The first medical college ever established in Europe, that at Salerno, in Italy, so received women many centuries ago, and they were better women for the instruction; for women then taught and practiced medicine, as well as learned it; but here in Republican America it has been the Eclectic College that accepted us in their classes, on the broad catholic

ground of our common humanity, and not as the cloistered inmates of a convent.

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In this connection, let me quote the words of the president of the institution: 'It devolves upon us of the new time, one and all, to take hold of life as we find it, make of it what best we can, and leave all things better because we have lived. Let each individual do just what he or she is most fit and able to do. Work and food have no sex; women must eat as well as men, and therefore have the same right and necessity to work. Their wants and capacity are the supreme law. What any person is able to do well, that same person, whether man or woman, has a right to do it against the whole world. It is wisest, therefore, to throw off every restriction to their enterprise and industry, and open every department of labor as wide as heaven itself. Nature and instinct will be sufficient to direct every choice and obviate every risk."

In this institution, with this understanding, we have been instructed faithfully and thoroughly; no lesson has been omitted, and no careless or intentional remark has been made to cast disrespect upon us, or to offend our modesty. Our teachers have been kind and considerate to every student, as friends and older brothers, rather than as mentors and taskmakers. They have not spared us in the curriculum of study; they were faithful to their part, and they required of us that we should accomplish ours; but they have made our labors pleasant by the interest which they took in our success; and if we achieve professional eminence in the future, much of the honors will be theirs. To them, and to you, the Board of Trustees of this Eclectic Medical College of the City of New York, the representatives and exponents of Reformed Medical Practice, we render our warmest acknowledgments, with our earnest wishes in your success in your present enterprise.

With institutions, as with individuals, character is born of conflict.

And now, classmates, fellow-students no longer, but esteemed friends, I offer what every woman claims as her prerogative -the last word. I mean it to be a cheery one. We have had a

pleasant association together here, which will be always fresh and delightful in memory. Perhaps as time rolls it farther back into the past, it will live with us as our "golden age." I am